Sunday, April 24, 2005

Podcasts for EFL / ESL learners

I haven't been posting much lately, as I've been looking at / listening to a lot of podcasts, trying to figure out how useful they might be to English language learners, and even if it's worth trying to get learners themselves involved.

I've been doing that on my Yahoo360's blog. And relating to this new tool from Yahoo, I'm not convinced yet...There are things I do like about it (see the blog for more details), but there are more things I don't like about it. At least, I don't think I'd use it with students.

2 comments:

Hi, Graham! I'd be very interested to know what you think of podcasting now that you've spent some time on it. Especially, what are it's applications to the EFL/ESL classroom? Is it worth delving into?

I am really excited about it and am preparing to do my own podcasts as a way of learning how to do it.

There are a few ESL/EFL podcats about now, as I mention on my podcasting blog (http://360.yahoo.com/bcgstanley)

There are so many possibilities: look at the recent discussion over at Blinger, for instance:

http://blinger.org/index.php/weblog/comments/esl-podcasting/

What are the applications? Well, there are so many possibilities, and only a few of them are being tried out at the moment. One for students I'd like to explore is the student radio project. The students put together a radio (podcast) programme to share with another class or school in another country.